This is the dramatic moment a little girl falls from an edge above a busy street is caught in a blanket stretched out by people below.

The dramatic incident happened on Xinye Street, which is in Weitang Town, in Changzhou, which is a prefecture-level city in southern Jiangsu province, China.

Police said that the youngster had climbed out of the window onto a ledge above the street, as a guard rail had not been installed by her parents.

She had toppled as she played and had landed from the third floor onto a second-floor window ledge near an air conditioning unit, where she was left hanging with her feet dangling over the edge of the steep drop below.

An attempt to get into the second-floor apartment failed, as it was locked.

But one quick-thinking person managed to grab a cushioned quilt from a parked car and it was then grabbed by everybody else around and stretched out below the youngster, who was losing her grip.

Sure enough, she was eventually forced to let go, plummeting to the street below and even knocking some of the facade away as she fell before landing safely in the quilt stretched out between the rescuers.

One of the rescuers, identified as Ms Li, who helped to hold the quilt, said: “There were a lot of people who rushed over to help to hold the quilt, and luckily we managed to catch her and although frightened, she was not hurt.”

The owner of the car said it was a coincidence that she had put the quilt in her vehicle that day.

The youngster was then carried upstairs, where she was handed over to her grandmother, who had not realised she had climbed out of the window and thanked the rescuers.